Explosive Rounds For Railgun

Interesting one - a big limitation of the Navy's new railgun is that it can only fire solid lumps of metal which are only effective against some targets.

Now they're working on rounds made of 'reactive material' - basically explosive metals:

"With an upgrade like this, the railgun could be able to deliver enough explosive effects to deal with hard targets like bunkers. And it might be able to tackle area targets as well: an alternative option is described as 'payload pellets' of Reactive Material, which will shower down and destoy soft targets such as vehicles in much the same way as the RM shrapnel from the BattleAxe warhead. Since the RM is not explosive and the rounds are comparatively lightweight, future warships will have deep magazines without having to store dangerous propellant or explosive."


blog.wired.com...

Sounds like this coukld have all sorts of applications.